Course Redesign

Introduction

The importance of a substantial online and hybrid course redesign, when the three-year
Online/Hybrid Course Development Agreement has expired, is explained in SACS Policy
Statement 3, “Institutions must ensure that their distance and correspondence education courses
and programs comply with the Principles of Accreditation. This applies to all educational
programs and services, wherever located or however delivered.”

SACS Principles of Accreditation Comprehensive Standard 3.4.10 states: “The institution places primary responsibility for the content, quality, and effectiveness
of the curriculum with its faculty.”

In addition, SACS Guidelines in the Application of the Principles of Accreditation
to Distance and Correspondence Education state:

The faculty assumes primary responsibility for and exercises oversight of distance
and correspondence education, ensuring both the rigor of programs and the quality
of instruction.

The technology used is appropriate to the nature and objectives of the programs and
courses and expectations concerning the use of such technology are clearly communicated
to students.

MTSU Online and Hybrid Course Redesign Fees

Course designers are required to renew their agreements and substantially (50% or
more of the content) redesign their courses at the end of the three-year contract
period. If the original course developer does not wish to redesign the course or
is unavailable, the department chair may assign a replacement. All redesigned courses
are reviewed and approved using the same process that is used for new course development.

Please note: If a substantial redesign of an existing online or hybrid course is
necessary prior to contract expiration, due to textbook changes or other extenuating
circumstances, course designers can receive, with prior approval from Distance Education
Faculty Services and contract renewal, the appropriate redesign fee. Written requests
for early redesign may be made to the Distance Education Faculty Services Office.

Planning

Taking the time to plan the design of an online or hybrid course is critical to its
success. At least two semesters should be allotted to plan and develop a new course.
Please refer to the Course Completion Deadlines chart below to assist in planning
your course development timeline.

Course Completion Deadlines

Semester Course to Be Offered

Due Date for Peer Review

Summer and Fall

March 1

Spring

October 1

Please Note:

All course content should be complete and ready for the peer review by the dates in
the chart above. Incomplete courses are not reviewed.

Redesign fees cannot be paid if the course redesign is completed prior to redesign
agreement approval.

An Online Faculty Mentor (OFM) is assigned to each faculty member who is redesigning
an existing online course, and the same review and approval processes used for new
course development apply (see Course Approval section).

Required Training

All online and hybrid course content is required to be developed for and accessed
within the MTSU-supported learning management system currently Desire2Learn (D2L).

First-time faculty course designers are required to schedule a D2L one-on-one consultation
or to register for a workshop conducted by the staff of the Faculty Instructional
Technology Center (FITC) located in the Telecommunications Building on campus. Workshop
attendance may be scheduled online. One-on-one consultation may be arranged by calling 615/904-8189.

Turnitin (an educational suite providing faculty assistance with evaluating student
written works and is now accessed through the Desire2Learn (D2L) dropbox tool.)

Experienced course designers are encouraged to discuss the design or redesign of their
courses with FITC staff due to innovations in software/hardware and multimedia used
in online course instruction.

MTSU Instructional Design Specialist

First-time and experienced course designers are required/strongly encouraged, respectively,
to discuss the design or redesign of their courses with the MTSU Instructional Design
Specialist (IDS). The IDS is located in Room 348 of the James E. Walker Library in
the Learning, Teaching and Innovative Technology Center, and may be reached at 615-494-7671 at to schedule an appointment. Please refer to
the Planning section of this website for additional planning resources and information.

A D2L development shell is established upon registration for a workshop or before
the first, scheduled, one-on-one consultation.

Faculty may use an existing D2L development shell during their training session(s).

Course designers may request a D2L development shell by completing a request form.

Even though D2L shells are created for every semester course, semester shells should never be used for course creation. Course content may be lost if a semester shell is cancelled or deleted.

Course content from a previous semester shell may be moved into a development shell
for redesign. For instruction, the content is then moved to an active semester shell.

A syllabus template is included in each D2L development shell. The use of this template
for online courses ensures that distance learners are provided all of the resources
specific to this student population.

Getting Started

Course Proposal

Course designers must complete the Online/Hybrid Course Proposal Form (one per course), and scan and email it to Distance Education Faculty services. The
course designer’s and chair’s signatures are required on the Proposal Form. Information
from the Proposal Form is posted to the Distance Education database.

Redesign Agreement/Contract

Upon receipt of the Course Proposal Form an Online/Hybrid Course Redesign Agreement
is emailed to the course developer. The course designer should immediately review,
sign and forward to his/her department chair/school director for approval.

Please note: The course developer cannot be compensated if the redesign agreement is not approved
and on file in Distance Education Faculty Services prior to completion of course redesign.

Online Faculty Mentor (OFM) Assignment

Upon receipt of the Course Proposal Form, an Online Faculty Mentor (OFM) is assigned
to the course designer to serve as a resource, as needed, and to conduct a peer review
upon completion of course redesign.

Course Development Assistance

The staff at the Faculty Instructional Technology Center (FITC), located in the Telecommunications Building, are happy to instruct faculty on the
use of various technical tools that may be used in course development. Appointments
may be made for one-on-one consultations by calling 904-8189. The FITC also offers
workshops for which faculty may register.

As stated above, first-time course developers are required, and experienced course
designers are encouraged, to discuss the design or redesign of their courses with
the MTSU’s Instructional Design Specialist located in Room 348 of the James E. Walker
Library in the Learning, Teaching and Innovative Technology Center (LT&ITC). Appointments may be made by calling 615-494-7671.

All MTSU online and hybrid courses must be developed in accordance with the MTSU Distance Education Guidelines, which have been approved by the MTSU Distance Education Committee.

Peer Review Form

The Peer Review Form serves several purposes in the course development, review and approval processes.

Course designers are encouraged to review and to use the Peer Review Form as a course development/redesign guide. This form contains the baseline elements
required to complete an online/hybrid course. Incomplete courses are not accepted for peer review.

This form is used by the course designer to conduct a self-evaluation of the completed
course.

The form is also used by the assigned OFM to conduct the peer review of the completed
course.

The department chair/school director reviews the completed Peer Review Form as part
of the delivery approval process.

HTML Content

It is best that the majority of course files be in web/HTML page format since web
pages are immediately available to students who are visually impaired and use JAWs
to read their course pages. JAWs cannot read Word documents, PowerPoint presentations,
Excel files, and PDFs in the D2L viewer. JAWs users who take a course that contains
content pages created entirely in Word and PDF would be forced to download every content
page before they could be read. Having to download every file can be frustrating for
the student. However, if Word, PDF, PowerPoint, and Excel files are used sparingly,
and only when it is appropriate for the assignment, then linking to these files is
fine. Instructors can link to these files from the content area and/or a dropbox.
The instructor must be sure to make all files accessible no matter which file type
is used.

How Do I Convert My Word Documents to HTML Web Pages?

It is best not to ever paste Word content directly into a D2L HTML file. To convert
a Word document to D2L web page (with or without an applied page template), please
follow these instructions.

Create a new web page/file in D2L and choose one of the built in pages templates with
simple formatting to give your page a style. (Note: An accessible syllabus outline
is one of the template choices.)

Copy the text of an entire Word document, or a portion of the Word document, depending
on what you are trying to accomplish. (If you are using our syllabus template you
may want to copy content for each section separately.)

Move back to the D2L web page

Place the cursor at the place in the D2L web page that you wish to paste.

Use the paste as Text command – Control + Shift + V (Windows) or Shift+Option+Command+V
(Mac) to paste the text of the Word document as plain text. Pasting text in this manner
places all text in one long paragraph.

Break up the text into paragraphs if you need to and apply heading and list styles.
(Note: If you don’t break the text into paragraphs adding a heading style or list
style will affect all of the text. Break the text into paragraphs by placing the cursor
in the new paragraph location and press the enter key.)

Create Accessible tables – Phillip V. suggests using http://accessify.com/ for table creation, however, if you have simple tables, just adding a title and description
in Word’s table properties and then pasting the table into your D2L web page the normal
way – not plain text. Control +V (Windows) or Command +V (Mac) will make a partially
accessible table.

Accessify creates the HTML code for a highly accessible table and is the best choice,
however, you will need to paste this table into your page via code view. If you are
not familiar with HTML consult with the FITC staff.

Free programs such as FrontPage can aid in locating the proper place to paste code
because you can type in the words “put table here” in page view, highlight those words,
and switch to HTML view and the text and HTML tags for “put table here” will be highlighted.
You can then delete the highlighted text and HTML tags and paste in the Accessify
code.

Export any images that existed in the Word document as separate images. (Right click
and save the images to your computer.)

Import the images into your web page and add alt text and descriptions.

Student Authentication Requirements

To be in compliance with the Higher Education Opportunity Act and SACSCOC Policy and Principles of Accreditation, MTSU must "demonstrate that the student who registers in a distance or correspondence
education course or program is the same student who participates in and completes
the course or program and receives the credit by verifying the identity of a student
who participates in class or coursework by using, at the option of the institution,
methods such as (1) a secure login and pass code, (2) proctored examinations, and
(3) new or other technologies and practices that are effective in verifying student
identification."

This verification is accomplished by requiring the MTSU online student to:

use a secure login and pass code into the MTSU-supported Learning Management System,
currently Desire2Learn (D2L) and/or;

sit for proctored examinations.

Instruction by Other Faculty

Department chairs/school directors may assign the instruction of approved online and
hybrid courses to other professors. It is recommended that courses be designed accordingly.

Lead Designer

Faculty who develop online courses or who redesign existing online courses are considered
to be lead designers and are responsible for maintaining/updating their approved online and hybrid course
content and for sharing the approved content with faculty (full-time and adjunct faculty)
teaching sections of their courses during the three-year contract period.

Lead Designer Responsibilities:

work with the department to schedule the course.

update the content in the master shell each semester as necessary;

upload the approved course for sectional instructors;

each semester meet with professors new to the instruction of the course to familiarize
them with the content and assist in updating the welcome page, contact information,
and calendar;

work with department to obtain textbooks and other course materials;

Note: These services should be provided by the lead designers even if they are not teaching
their own courses during the semester.

Original Content

Development of original content is required in order to receive development and redesign
fees. Students must be able to complete the course requirements and satisfy learning
outcomes using the content within D2L without relying on third party vendor/e-publisher
websites.

Asynchronous Learning

MTSU online courses are to be designed for asynchronous learning. Students cannot
be required to be on campus or online at specified dates/times, but may be given the
opportunity to attend optional meetings.

Use of Third Party/Publisher Websites

Publisher content, or other pre-produced content, may be utilized but should be thoughtfully
integrated into the original course content produced by the developer.

The course must be designed so it can continue to run if a publisher's, or supplemental,
site is down.

Instructors must be aware of publisher/supplemental site scheduled downtime especially
during testing periods.

MTSU's ITD does not support nor provide archival capabilities for content posted to
publisher/third party vendor sites.

Due to financial aid, FERPA and other regulations/issues, instruction of course content
must be limited and student educational records not shared in e-publisher and other
third party vendor websites.

If a course developer wishes to use third party vendor/e-publisher content in the
development of their online course, the course designer must contact the MTSU Faculty
Instructional Technology Center (FITC) to: 1) determine if a contract is needed and
if currently in place for the specific third party vendor/e-publisher the course designer
wishes to use; 2) to determine what integration with the third party vendor content
is applicable within their D2L course shells.

Students should be notified of costs associated with the use of publisher/supplemental
websites by posting the fees to PipelineMT semester schedules.

Email

Course designers must create their online and hybrid courses to include the use of
an MTSU-assigned email account—preferably within D2L. To comply with FERPA requirements
(see section below), discussions regarding educational records between instructor
and student must never take place outside an MTSU-assigned email account.

Student Communication and FERPA

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) (20 U.S.C. § 1232g; 34 CFR Part 99) is a Federal law that protects the privacy of student education records. The law applies to all schools that receive funds under an applicable program of
the U.S. Department of Education.

Per this Act, MTSU faculty must communicate with and provide course feedback (including
grades) to their distance education students within an institutionally-assigned email
account. Use of the MTSU email within D2L is preferred for online course instruction
for archival and security purposes. However, distance instructors may respond to student
emails received via the MTMail account.

Educational data (such as class schedule, grades, GPA, academic standing, test scores, academic transcripts,
student employment, class lists, and email between the student and MTSU) and personally identifiable information (Social Security Number, driver's license number, account number, and credit or debit
card number in association with the person's name or access code) must never be sent to or from a non-institutionally-assigned email account.

Course Approval Instructions

When the redesign of an online or hybrid course is complete, please follow these instructions
for delivery approval. Please note: Online Faculty Mentors (OFMs) are not permitted to review incomplete
courses.

Course Designer:

Completes and submits the Add A User Request Form to add the assigned Online Faculty Mentor (OFM) and department chair/school director
to the new course. ITD should inform the course designer when they are added.

Moving Course Content

Locate the link “Import/Export/Copy Components” on the left side of the page.

Click on Search for Offering and locate the course that contains the content you want
to copy.

Search for the course that contains the content, select it, and then click the Add
Selected button at the lower left hand corner of the page. Note: You can type in the semester code – fall 2013 is “201380” and spring 2013 is “201310”
and summer 2013 is “201350” and spring 2014 is 201410 and all of the courses you taught
in that semester will display. Note, you may also need to search for a development
course. Copy the name of the development course and paste that in the search box.

Click the Copy All Components button if you want to copy the entire course. This is
typically what you want to do. You can also select specific components.

Middle Tennessee State University, in its educational programs and activities involving students and employees, does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, creed, ethnic or national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, disability, age (as applicable), status as a covered veteran or genetic information. For more information see Middle Tennessee State University. | Nondiscrimination Policy